Rudbeckia vs Echinacea

Yours is the "magic walnut" type of reasoning. The "magic walnut" form of
logic runs along this path:
My grampa ate a walnut a day for 80 years, then died of cancer, but never
went blind or insane. Therefore walnuts cause cancer, but prevent
blindness & insanity.
-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.

If personal anecdote were evidence then "I didn't need surgery after I
took echinacea" would be proof of a lot. Fortunately for public health,
personal anecdote is never proof -- we would have no health advances at
all if anecdote were mistaken for evidence of anything, & we would all
still believe tomatos are deadly poison.
Your experience would at most provide the case for a hypothesis that must
be tested by something a little less more substantial than personal
anecdote, with doubleblind controlled studies that understand issues of
statistical significance, statistical anomaly, placebo effect, or
coincidence. If of a hundred people on Echinacea, & a hundred people given
a cat's-eye-marble, 2% in each group recovered from hangnails & bursitis,
this would NOT be proof that 2% of the population can be benifited by
eating cat's-eye marbles or echinace.
Alas for your belief system, your particular hypothesis has already been
made, & though tested again & again from the 1930s to 2004, no evidence
has ever been found that echinacea has any health benefits at all. And
since echinacea is not even recommended for ANY condition that would
require surgery, you might as well have been eating cat's-eye marbles or
raw pork squeezings.

You are repeating vendor disinformation. (And by the way, the
pharmaceutical industry in Germany dissimates herbs, so if you don't trust
Pfizer, you sure as hell shouldn't trust the German system which has taken
these matters out of the hands of vendors & pretend-physicians).
The reality is Germany restricts the use of Echinacea much more greatly
than any other European country, or America. Commission E has advised the
government to instruct doctors to inform patients who demand echinacea
that it INTERFERS with the immune system & may increase illnesses if used
for longer than 8 weeks. And yes, it is doctors rather than
check-out-tellers & herb-quacks who give out the herbs & the information,
so it is primarilyh outside of Germany that echinacea is sold as an
immunity booster when the German finding was that it would more likely be
an immunity suppressent.
Contrary to your claim copied from vendors, the "German government" does
NOT prescribe herbs at all. Guided by the recommendstions of Commission E,
the government REGULATES herbs, it does not prescribe them. Echinacea, as
one of the less dangerous (& least useful but very popular) herbs, happens
also to be an over-the-counter herb (as in the US) requiring no
prescription per se. But as the German government has done away with the
"alternative" community of crackpots & insisted that actual physicians be
the only persons legally empowered to give professional medical advice &
treatments, the go-to person for herbal advice in Germany will be an M.D.
-- unlike in the USA. In Germany as in the US not every doctor knows
everything & many are too busy to look it up, but at least it will be in
your medical file that your swilling herbal remedies, lessening the
chances of the physician later prescribing a medication becomes toxic when
mixed with certain herbs, or negate in value. Even if imperfect, the
German system is an improvement, as the advice received from an M.D. is
VASTLY more likely to be medically sound that that which Americans receive
from vendors, store owners, & other non-physicians including many who
insist on being addressed as Doctor even though they are not doctors.
The German government has arranged that doctors rather than healthfood
store checkout tellers, self-styled naturopaths, occult homeopaths, smell
therapists, & assorted non-physician loons control the decimination of
herbs of all kinds in any medicinal context. This is supposed to help
educate the public MEDICALLY on what might be helpful but probably won't
be helpful, what has no chance in hell of being helpful, & what in fact
really can be helpful. Echinacea happens not to be in that last category.
There have arisen some problems with the German system. German doctors who
benefit financially by promoting herbs are responsible for certain
Irreprodicble Results regarding plant estrogens effect on women -- no
study outside of Germany has been able to reproduce the profitable
findings. But largely the German studies of herbs have been as good as any
elsewhere, & do not make any claims in favor of echinacea.
You'll also be sad to hear that in Germany the government colluding with
pharmacists (rather than lying-ass superstion-vending herbalists) are
responsible for the quality control of herbs. Thus if you buy Tahebo in
Germany, it should actually have a minimum standard requirement of herbal
quinine in it; but if you buy a Taheebo produce in the United States, it
will be sawdust from the wrong species with no quinine at all, literally
obtained as floor-sweepings from a sawmill (the taheebo used by the lumber
trade is the wrong species; even the right species has herbal quinine
under the bark, not in the bark or in the leaves or in the wood).
Or, if you buy saint john's wart in the United States, it will probably be
ground up leaves & twigs with little or no medicinal property; but if you
buy it in Germany it will be derived from the berries & roots & be
relatively potent. So too if you buy echinacea in Germany, it will be
extract or powder of the root only (rather than the leaves & twigs as in
the USA). The German product will have a minimum required antioxidant
content (making it as medicinally valid as a strawberry or a russet
potato, which have greater antioxidant chemical properties).
This quality controls don't exist in the United States & therefor the
quality of the products is a random affair. In nearly all cases even those
few herbs that CAN be beneficial won't be beneficial because they are mere
garden rubble sold as food supplements, not products that must meet even a
minimal standard. Now the EFFICACY is a separate matter altogether --
Germany hasn't banned the use of worthless herbs in favor of the few valid
ones, it has merely set up an environment whereby your chances of being
correctly informed by a DOCTOR of the risks & possible (or impossible as
the case may be) benifits.
So by the German method, if a patient wants to take St John's Wart for
depression, they can do so. Ideally the individual will be told by their
doctor a few simple truths: St John's Wart is a mild but potentially
efficacious mood stablizer, but with potential side-effects equal to those
of stronger medications. Plus now the doctor knows what the patient is
taking, unlike in the United States where self-medicating depressives fail
to tell their doctor what else they're taking, & so suffer unduly because
St Johns Wart negates the function of many prescription medications.
For St John's Wart, the German system has worked really well. Between 70 &
75 million dollars (the US equivalent) per year are spent by German's on
St John's Wart. The majority of users probably gained some benefit, even
if the benifit was in avoiding an aggressive treatment of an actual mental
health problem they probably don't have. "I'm feeling blue, doc, I want
some meds," is quite different from having a mental health issue that
REQUIRES meds. In most cases, some herbs provide at least a placebo
affect, & with saint johns wart the evidence is it provides a bit more
than the placebo effect.
By comparison to the 70+ million annually bought of St John's Wart with a
doctor's assurance that it can be helpful, the much smaller ten million
=formerly spent annually by Germans on echinacea is dropping ten to twenty
percent each year because when DOCTORS inform their patients that it has
not been shown to be useful for such things as the common cold, its use
declines. When the patient is warned (as German doctors & even the
echinacea bottle do warn) that taking echinacea more than 8 weeks may
DAMAGE the immune system, this convinces many not to use it at all. But in
the United States, it is widely used as a preventative taken daily for
months or years on end, under the widespread mistaken belief that it is an
immunity booster. That's right, it's second most common alleged value
after its use for common colds is (in America) what the Germans warn is
not only not true, but is the opposite of true. It DAMAGES immunity.
When a patient insists on it anway, the government has not insisted German
doctors recommend only effective herbs, & patients can make their own
decisions in these matters if they are not insanely insisting their health
be worsened. To permit the worthless herb for respiratory illnesses is not
profiteering cruelty, for the real instructions are to "drink plenty of
water & get lots of rest &, oh, by the way, here's the placebo you wanted,
please don't use it for longer than 8 weeks or it may harm your immune
system."
The patient doesn't get it because it works, but because used properly it
causes no harm; because people want to take SOMEthing & refuse to believe
echinacea won't do a thing; & all this is better placed in a doctor's
hands than an herbal crackpot's hands.
The physician's expectation is the patient will recover from a congestive
cold whether or not treated with anything at all -- & will feel better in
the meantime BELIEVING the placebo was part of the reason the inevitable
recovery actually occurred. But if congestion does in fact worsens, a
doctor rather than an herbal crackpot, naturopath, homeopath, smell
therapist, or neighbohood crackhead, will be in charge, & can take
measures to provide actual treatment.
It's a pretty good system all in all -- people get the herbs they demand
with a much reduced chance of injuring themselves through harmful misuse
or by failing to treat seriously a treatable illness. But this is not
proof that Germans know something that even smell therapists know though
doctors in all other countries can't figure it out.
The herbal industry lives in TERROR of the German system getting
established in the United States, because thereafter quality controls
would force vendors to throw away 99.9% of what they sell people today
(i.e., sawdust & garden rubble); herbal crackpots without at least an M.D.
will vanish from the scene as unqualified to give medical treatments for
even a hangnail, rather than control the field as they do now; & the
product availability will be shifted from the current sources to the
pharmaceutical industry which can control the chemical content of the
herbal extract or powder, without reference to its efficacy or lack
thereof. The German system would bankrupt everyone presently involved in
the American system wherein manufacturers, vendors, & retailers who have
no restraints & are answerable to no physician or pharmacist & are left
alone by the US government until after something actually kills a few
people.
Herbs with zero medicinal properties tend to have zero side-effects so the
US government doesn't interfer with their being packaged & sold -- it is
only the VALID herbs, such as huang-ma or valerian, that the US government
bans or restricts, because powerful herbs have powerful side-effects.
Really the German method is way better, even if not faultless, Having an
M.D. but being denied an "alternative" practitioner is not a 100%
guarantee that crackpottism disappears, but the odds are way more in favor
of the patient receiving credible information and/or care from the M.D.
who, in Germany, is the only legitimate care-giver you're permitted.
Being in the hands of the medical community in Germany has meant a great
many studies exist for many herbs, including echinacea. None have found it
efficacious for treating the common cold; despite that vendors keep
referring to studies that prove it can, turns out the best-case studies
are merely inconclusive -- proving nothing is the best the vendors can
hope for!
Annals of Internal Medicine (1 Jan 2001) published an analysis of the
existing literature on Echinacea (restricted to double-blind & controlled
studies), Turned out no study anywhere in the world, including Germany,
has ever shown that Echinacea has any effect on the common cold. The
studies ranged from inconclusive, to evidence of no benefit, but never
evidence of benefit. What the studies DO indicate is that allergic
reactions are common, & may echinacea can be especially harmful to people
with asthma or hepititis. But as for positive medicinal effects, narry a
one. Since that 2001 overview of the literature, more studies have been
concluded, & whatever case (based on inconclusiveness) that could formerly
be made for echinacea gets weaker with every trial.
Positive cases can be made for ginko biloba, for saint john's wart, for
herbal quinine of one species of taheebo tree, & a few suchlike herbs. No
such case can be made for echinacea. And even the Very Few potententially
effective herbs are highly unlikely to have any of the required chemical
compounds in the dried powders & wet extracts sold in healthfood stores to
Americans, Canadians, & Brits (though the Brits may have easier access to
German brands). You can self-medicate & maybe harm yourself with your
HOME-GROWN St John's Wart, but the stuff sold in stores comes from
unregulated packagers of rubbish incapable of delivering a measurable
dosage of anything good bad or indifferent. The use of these products is
therefore called Herbal Roulette.
-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.

It's worth noting that in a relatively recent double-blind study done at
Vancouver General Hospital (it was for a headache remedy if memory serves),
just under 20% of the patients on the placebo reported positive results. And
this isn't an unusual figure.

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